Seaweed
by OwlinAMinor
Summary: Steve and Tony go fishing. Tony loses his hat. Steve swims out to get it. Some seaweed causes some issues. Superhusbands/Stony. One-shot.


**TITLE: Seaweed**

**RATING: T**

**PAIRING: Superhusbands/Stony**

**GENRE: Romance & Humor **

**DESCRIPTION: Steve and Tony go fishing. Tony loses his hat. Steve swims out to get it. Some seaweed causes some issues.**

**POV: Steve**

**LENGTH: one-shot**

**UNFORTUNATELY, I LOST THAT LAW SUIT, SO: I don't own the Avengers or any of its characters. *sob sob***

**INSPIRATION: This is actually a true story, only replace Steve with me, replace Tony with my friend Kris (IgneusGlacies), switch Tony's and Steve's places on the fishing lessons thing, replace the hat with a plastic bag, make it three P.M. instead of five A.M., and take out all of the romantic stuff.**

**So um. Yeah. Enjoy Steve's adorable flailing.**

* * *

Ever since I woke from the ice, I had wanted to go fishing.

Fascinating as the twenty-first century and the plethora of technological gadgets that came with it were, I needed some peaceful, relaxing time by myself. I needed the warm sun on my back, the cool water at my feet, and the slow, pleasant, uneventful passage of an afternoon. I needed the burst of manly ego that always followed the hooking of a particularly impressive catch.

I needed _fishing._

And I hadn't been in _almost seventy years_. Sure, I'd been asleep for most of that time, but _still. The horror._

And so, it came to pass that Tony awoke into a groggy half-awake coma at four o'clock one morning to find me sneaking out of our bedroom, fishing rod in one hand and bait-and-tackle box in the other.

"Steeeeebe," he moaned, a hand protecting his eyes from the light of the rising sun introducing itself through the bedroom window.

Pretending not to hear him, I attempted to tiptoe through the slightly-ajar door of the room.

But even when he's only twenty-three-point-five percent conscious, nothing gets past Tony.

"Where're ya goin'?"

I wanted to get out of there, close the door, turn off my mobile telephone thingy, and enjoy a quiet, _peaceful_ day to myself. "Wanted to" being the key words in that sentence."

I guess my self-control leaves much to be desired.

"Steeeeebe~ Come back to beeeedddd~"

When I turned around, Tony had his arms stretched out in front of him, as though trying to grab something precious, and the stupidest grin on his face, as though he was drunk on the warmth of our bed and the thought of my presence in it, next to him, lying around, doing nothing, until noon …

"I'm going fishing for the whole day. I'm really sorry, but I just need some alone time."

_Self-control, Steve. It needs work. Major work. It-just-pissed-off-the-Hulk kind-of work._

"But Steeeeeeebe~!" Tony protested, pouting like a five-year-old who'd been deprived of ice cream. (It wasn't cute. At all. Shut up.) "Fishing is boooooorrrriiinnnggg~!"

"No, it's not, it's relaxing," I argued.

"But that's what _bed_ is for~!"

"But fishing is … it is … it's … it was my favorite thing to do by myself, you know, before," I said quietly.

"Well, alright then, I'll build you a fishing simulator – later, after more sleep. Or perhaps coffee. Will you make me coffee, Steebe? You make gooooood coffee."

"But that's not the _same_!" Now, I felt like the five-year-old.

"Why not?"

"It just _isn't_."

After a few minutes, I had agreed to let Tony come fishing with me.

Stupid Tony and his stupid, adorable puppy-dog eyes.

**THIS IS PROBABLY A BREAK, UNLESS HULK ATE IT.**

Well, there _was_ a catch. In payment for disturbing my _private_ fishing time, Tony had agreed to let me teach him how to fish. He'd taught me so much about the modern world (always doing that face-palm thing and sighing at my failures to understand supposedly simple concepts, my idiotic screw-ups, and my insistence in calling all of Ton's gadgets "gizmos" – he thought "forties talk" had no place in his "modern laboratory") that I wanted to get back at him. I wanted to be the experienced one for once.

**THIS BREAK KNOWS THAT CAP IS SOMETIMES AN IDIOT.**

Okay. Five minutes into teaching Tony how to fish, and I already understood why he had found teaching me about technology so exasperating.

"So, you press down on this button, hold it while you swing out the rod, and then let go?"

"Yes, that _is_ what I've been trying to get you to do for the past half hour."

"No need too get sassy with me, Cap. Geez. I can do it – I'm Tony Stark, I can do any-fucking-thing. Just watch me."

And yet, when Tony attempted, for the hundred-and-twenty-fourth time (I'd been counting), to cast out his fishing line, the line only reached a measly couple of inches into the water.

Tony looked just as surprised as he had the first hundred and twenty-three times. "How does this keep _happening_?" he demanded. "I'm doing it right! Maybe there's something wrong with this fishing rod. Steve, are you sure there's nothing wrong with this fishing rod?"

I sighed. Stupid Tony and his stupid, adorable refusal to admit he might be bad at something.

"Well, I was able to cast it fine myself earlier," I reasoned, "so I think it's fine."

"Maybe it broke between the time you used it and the time I used it?"

I grabbed the rod from him and cast the line successfully, just to prove my point (and also for the look of irritated jealousy on his face.) "Nope."

"It just hates me," he decided.

I smiled. _So_ like Tony to blame his failure on an inanimate object.

"Maybe," I said. "You should keep trying, though. It might warm up to you."

He looked at me skeptically.

I gave him an encouraging nod.

"Fine, if you say so."

He was on Failure Number One-Thirty-One when I glanced back at our pile of things and noticed that something was missing.

"Tony … where's your hat?"

"My what?" He turned to shoot a questioning glance in my direction, causing him to fail yet again. "Ste-eve!"

"Sorry," I apologized before he could get too annoyed. (As cute as he was, Pouting Tony was _not_ easy to get along with.) "But seriously, where's your hat? I don't see it with our other stuff."

Tony had brought a baseball cap (Yankees, of course – he'd bought it _explicitly_ to piss me off after he'd learned that I was a huge Dodgers fan) with him to ward off the midday sunlight, but had decided not to wear it when he found the skies to be under invasion by clouds at five o'clock in the morning.

"I dunno, it's not like I moved it or anything," he replied.

The two of us scanned the surrounding area for a minute before my serum-enhanced vision spotted it lounging in the water a couple hundred feet away, probably relocated there by the wind.

Tony sighed and shook his head sadly, as though hearing about the death of an old friend. "That's too bad. I really liked that cap."

… Wait, but we'd found it. I was confused.

"Why are you acting as though it's gone forever?" I asked. "You could swim out and get it."

My boyfriend looked at me as though I was crazy. "Me? Swim out and get it?" He began to count reasons he couldn't swim out and get it on his fingers. "First, it's probably ruined. Second, it's painfully early in the morning – the water's probably more freezing than Natasha's heart. Third, I'm lazy. We are leaving it there, argument over, the end."

"If you're so lazy, why did you want to come on this fishing trip anyway?" I countered.

"Because I love you, Steve, and don't want to go an entire day without seeing you," he said. "Duh."

…

Well then.

Color me speechless.

Tony smiled, that contented, proud, I'm-awesome-but-not-for-the-reasons-I-usually-tell-people smile that sort-of made me melt inside. "Have I ever mentioned how fucking irresistible your blushing face is?"

"U-um … T-Tony, I …"

At a loss for words, I decided to pull him in for a kiss, instead.

He kissed back, soft and passionate and still smiling.

After a minute, he broke away, and continued the conversation as though nothing had happened.

"So I don't have to get my hat, then, right?"

"No, you do!" I scolded him. "Those are terrible reasons. Your hat is polluting the environment!"

"It's one hat, Steve," he replied. "I think the environment'll survive."

"But it's _littering_!"

"You're littering."

"But … but what if a fish chokes on it or something?"

Seeing how persistent I was, he threw his hands up in exasperation. "Fine, whatever, _you_ go get it, if it's so fucking important to you."

"Alright, I will. But one word to Clint about me rescuing a Yankees hat and you won't be able to walk for weeks."

"I might not mind _that_, if you know what I mean." Tony wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and I found myself blushing as I thought of _exactly_ what he might mean.

But I was working on my self-control, so I rolled my eyes. "_Tony_."

"_Steve_," he imitated. "But yeah, okay, I get it. What happens while fishing, stays with the fishes."

I smiled. "Bingo."

And with that, I stripped down to my boxers (ignoring Tony's wolf-whistles at my exposed chest) and waded into the water.

The area around where we were fishing was heavily populated by slippery rocks, so I sat down and slid myself along the pond's bottom in order to minimize my chances of falling. It wasn't long before the water was deep enough for me to swim, so I flipped over onto my stomach and began to doggy-paddle out in the direction of the hat.

At least, I _began_ to.

Because there was something … hindering my progress.

Something called _seaweed._

Just imagine it, okay? You have this pond. It's about five o'clock in the morning, so the water is freezing cold. Probably under seventy degrees Fahrenheit. And you're swimming out, and everything's fine and dandy (except for the cold, that's kind-of a buzz-kill, as Tony would say) and then, suddenly, the water is five feet deep, and four and a half feet of that is pure freaking _seaweed_.

It felt as though there was this alive, massive alien thing beneath me, attempting to tie me up and drag me down to the bottoms of the pond. It was slimy and somehow sharp at the same time, it was creepy, it was disgusting, it was … it was … seaweed.

You can't blame me for panicking. You really can't. I mean, come on, guys, _seaweed._

"SEEEAAAWEEEEDD!" I screeched. Tony said, later, that the resemblance to a pre-pubescent girl was uncanny.

"What?" Tony asked.

"SEAWEED! THERE'S SEAWEED ALL AROUND ME! IT'S LIKE THE WATER IS FIVE FEET DEEP, AND FOUR AND A HALF FEET OF THAT IS SEAWEED! FREAKIN' SEAWEED! IT'S TRYING TO DRAG ME DOWN INTO THE DEPTHS OF ITS UNDERWATER REALM, ONLY I WON'T IT, BUT IT'S TRYING, TONY, IT'S TRYING SO HARD, AND IT'S FREAKIN' DISGUSTING! IT'S GOING TO EAT ME! IT'S GOING TO DEVOUR ME THE WAY THOR DEVOURS POPTARTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHEN HE THINKS NOONE'S WATCHING! IT'S SEEEAAAWEEEEEDDDD!"

I continued to rant in a similar manner as I doggy-paddled to the hat, picked it up, and turned back to the shore. Each stroke was more laborious than the last as the seaweed (which I would forever swear was a sentient being) got a firmer grip on my body.

It's difficult to describe how relieved I was when I finally reached the shore. I'll just tell you that my thoughts at the time were something along the lines of, _Yessssssssss thank God. I'll be good now, I'll go to mass every single Sunday and thank you for letting me out of this alive._

The only bad thing about reaching the shore was that I noticed what Tony had been doing the entire time I was rescuing his (unworthy) hat: _laughing his unfairly amazing butt off._

"I don't see how that was so funny," I muttered, stepping back onto land (_land, glorious land_) and grabbing a towel.

"It's just … You, and the seaweed," Tony said between bouts of laughter. "And the _flailing_, and the screeching, and … and the _ranting,_ and oh, _Steve_ …"

"What?"

Shaking his head rapidly to clear himself of his (unjustified) hysteria, Tony grabbed a hold of my shoulders and stared right into my eyes – and I momentarily forgot who I was, where I was, what my purpose in life was.

"That was the most adorable thing I have ever seen in my entire life."

And then he kissed me, and – well, darn it all, I let him. And it was amazing.

How could it not be?

Once he could breathe again, he inquired, raising a quizzical eyebrow, "Now, can I have my hat back?"

"What's the magic word, Tony?" I retorted.

"_Please_."

"You don't mean it."

"Can I have my hat back, please pretty please with infinite blowjobs on top?"

"… You still don't mean it."

He thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, "Steve, nobody else that I know – hell, probably nobody else in this world – would be willing to swim out into four and a half feet of seaweed in a freezing pond at five A.M. just to rescue a hat for a team he hated – just because, and I quote, 'What if a fish chokes on it?' You are the nicest guy I know, and I am so lucky to be your boyfriend, and may I _please_ have my hat back?"

…

You know, sometimes, Tony just comes out with these little pieces of what he's really feeling that make me want to grab onto him and never let go.

"That's acceptable," I decided, relinquishing the hat and grinning at him.

"YEAH!" Tony did a fist-pump of victory. "By the way, you'll have to let me properly thank you for rescuing it later …"

"Sure, sounds like a plan."

"Glad you think so, Star-Spangled Man With a Plan. Hey, can later be … _sooner_?"

"Nope. You signed up for this fishing trip, so you'll be staying for the whole thing. All day long. Like it or not."

"Well, technically, I didn't _sign_ up."

"Same difference."

"Fuck you."

"You do."

"Good point. And it's great, isn't it?"

"Almost as great as the perfect cast you just made."

"The … OH MY FUCKING GOD, I DID IT! YESSS! I AM THE CHAMPION! I WIN!"

"Well, you haven't actually caught a fish yet…"

"STOP RAINING ON MY PARADE, CAPSICLE."

* * *

**If all of the amazing people reading this review, Tony will actually catch a fish. :D**


End file.
